Norma Cheren accused of selling marijuana

ATLANTA (WSB/CNN) - Neighbors of a 79-year-old Atlanta woman say she had a lot of visitors, but didn't think anything of it.

Turns out, police say, she was selling marijuana out of her home.

You almost can't take your eyes off the screen. Norma Cheren looks like someone's grandmother with her glasses and silver hair, but she's wearing a Fulton County Jail jump suit, facing drug charges.

And the 79-year-old seemed to feel just as out of place as she looked.

APD's narcotics team raided her house on Vickers Street in southeast Atlanta February 7, after detectives say they caught her trying to sell marijuana in Buckhead.

WSB-TV worked to obtain these photos of what the unit says they found on the inside. You can see the cash lining the old-style lunchboxes.

That's some of the $130,000 they found, and then you can see some of the marijuana, nine pounds in all.

Her neighbors say they thought the visitors to the home were just taking care of the 79-year-old.

"For the past what, six or seven months, I have been seeing like SUVs, other different cars. They will come over there, they'll get out of the truck, they'll go up the hill, they will be in there about 10 to 15 minutes, then come back and leave. So, I didn't think, you know, anything. I thought maybe they was giving her dialysis, or you know, or something because she's a sweet old lady," said an unidentified neighbor.

Police say they were tipped off to Cheren after following an alleged customer and persuading that person to give up the seller.

Cheren is being held on a $25,000 bond.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this is not her first run-in with the law. The paper reports she was sentenced to seven years probation for a 1991 drug violation.